Working in Austria
Science and research in the alps: Exciting career options in Austria
Vienna, one of the science hotspots in Austria © Guven Ozdemir / iStock.com
Like Germany, Austria is on the search for highly qualified workers. Professors and researchers from the European Union face few hurdles in the country. But Vienna has also rolled out the red carpet for third-country nationals as well. All you need to know!
Updated: 2024-08-08
Living and working in Austria – An overview
The number of foreigners living and working in Austria has been on the rise for many years, with the lion’s share of them coming from across the border in Germany. Fully 225,000 people from Germany called Austria home in 2023, a rise of 4 percent over the previous year – a dominant position that makes sense given that Germans, in contrast to almost all other nationalities, don’t have to learn the language to feel right at home.
Austria, though, needs even more people from abroad, particularly in so-called “shortage occupations”, meaning those jobs for which there is a deficit of home-grown talent. The list is long and includes all manner of engineering positions and medical workers in addition to numerous other specialist jobs. The country also has a need for social scientists and researchers in a number of fields and has made it relatively simple for third-country (non-EU) citizens to apply for visas (see below).
The advantages of working in Austria are numerous. The country offers the entire gamut of outdoor activities from hiking, skiing and climbing in the beautiful Alps to cycling along the Danube and swimming in the country’s beautiful lakes. Vienna and Salzburg, meanwhile, offer world-class museums, opera houses and concert halls. And all that in a country where rents tend to be lower than in neighbouring Germany.
The working life
Austria is home to relatively few large conglomerates, but there is a large number of small and mid-sized companies in the country. And they tend to offer attractive working conditions of the kind that are standard in many countries in Europe. Fulltime workers can expect to work between 38 and 40 hours per week and are entitled to a minimum of 25 vacation days per year for those working a five-day workweek, with many positions offering more than that. Not to mention the 13 bank holidays per year.
The average gross salary in Austria is 57,731 euros per year according to the 2023 Stepstone Salary Report, and the gross mean salary is 50,633 euros per year. The tax burden in the country, however, is one of the highest in Europe. According to the U.S.-based think tank Tax Foundation, the tax burden for a single worker with no children earning an average salary was 47.2 percent in 2023, third highest among countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For a married worker with two children, the tax burden is still over 30 percent.
Good to know
Health insurance is legally mandated in Austria, and there are no differences between insurance providers in the country, with policies dependent on place of residence and employer. There is no private health insurance option, but residents are now able to buy additional, private policies should they wish to do so.
Austria as an attractive location for science
Even if universities and research institutions make up just a fraction of the labour market when compared to employers from other sectors, Austria is nevertheless well-established as a place for scientific research. According to the Austrian Business Agency, almost 84,000 people (fulltime equivalent) are active in research and development in the country, with around two-thirds of those working in science.
Within the EU, Austria has the third highest “research intensity”, with the share expected to be 3.34 percent in 2024. The figure is a measure of how much money is spent on research and development in a country relative to gross domestic product. Accordingly, Austria is expected to spend 16.6 billion euros on R&D in 2024.
The country is home to:
- 22 public universities
- 21 universities of applied sciences
- 14 universities of education
- 2 private universities of applied sciences, and
- 17 private universities
Together, they employ around 2,500 professors, with many of them coming from abroad. While the largest share of professors from abroad hail from Germany, there are also plenty of professors from elsewhere in the world.
Similar to Germany, many of those who work at Austrian universities have fixed-term employment contracts. Laws pertaining to such contracts were changed in 2021, however, such that only three such fixed-term contracts can be offered in a row, with the total time limited to eight years. There are, however, exceptions.
Numerous Research Institutions
According to the most recent statistics pertaining to research institutions in the country from 2019 (as of July 2024), there are 5,569 research institutions in the country, though around 70 percent of those belong to a specific company. There are 305 state funded research institutions in Austria, including the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Some 38 organizations belong to the cooperative sector, which includes Austrian Cooperative Research (ACR) and the COMET centres.
International researchers can also take advantage of programs such as “Talents”, which promotes cooperative projects at the interface of education, research and the economy by networking scientists and companies.
Those interested in applying for research grants in Austria should visit Grants.at, an initiative of the Austrian Education Ministry that offers a comprehensive list of grants for scholars of all levels, from undergraduates to PhD students, postdocs and beyond.
Requirements for working in Austria
For holders of EU passports, there are very few bureaucratic hurdles when it comes to living and working in Austria. And happily, for scholars and researchers (so-called “very highly qualified workers”), in addition to those working in shortage occupations, the hurdles have been lowered for third-country foreigners as well.
Red-White-Red-Card
Such experts – in addition to graduates from Austrian universities and universities of applied sciences – may apply for a Red-White-Red Card, with the prerequisite being a job offer from an employer in Austria. Holders of a Red-White-Red Card are entitled to live and work in Austria for an initial period of two years. They are also allowed to bring their family members along with them.
EU Blue Card
The EU Blue Card is essentially the European Union-wide equivalent of the Red-White-Red Card, though the criteria are slightly different. The card is open to those who have completed a course of study with a minimum duration of three years at a university or other institution of higher education, have a binding job offer and will earn at least 47,855 euros per year. An exception is made for IT professionals, who must only provide proof of at least three years of relevant experience.
Holders of Red-White-Red Cards and EU Blue Cards may apply for extensions once the initial two-year period expires. The extension is provided in the form of the Red-White-Red plus card, which entitles holders to unlimited access to the Austrian labour market.
There are also specific “settlement permits” available to artists and researchers that have sightly different requirements than the aforementioned paths to residency. They are described here.
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